APP OF THE DAY - Paper by FiftyThree review (iPad)

Sometimes the simplest apps do best. At its core the iPad nails most of the fundamental tablet necessities with decent native apps. A decent photos application, notes and things like iBooks and the Music app all have the main tablet bases covered.

But what if you just want to scribble something down, or perhaps jot out an idea you have come up with quickly? There is no way to just use the iPad as a clean drawing surface, or anything that does it as smoothly as Apple itself. Enter Paper, one of the simplest and slickest applications on the App Store.

Paper by FiftyThree (iPad)

So how does Paper work? You are probably bored of us saying how simple the app is, but yeah, it's simple. Boot it up and there is a selection of notebooks. You can rename them, or add more if you want. Each has ten pages. The books can also be customised with different coloured paper and front covers.

The first book called making paper, on the far left, will teach you how to use the application in detail plus provide you with ideas for its various uses. To open up any book, either tap it or pinch out, pinching in will close it again.

Once you open a book, it becomes immediately apparent that getting the most out of the application is going to require a few purchases to be made. Individual pens can be bought or you can pick up the essential package that gives you all of them. The choices are sketch, outline, write, colour and draw.

For the meantime, if you just want to use the app to jot down notes, the free version is more than enough. However you can turn round some really impressive drawings when using the full repertoire of brushes. If you aren't sure, the app will even let you have a play around with them in a demo box on the application. If we had to pick one, it would be the colour option, as it lets you fill in drawings a bit quicker. The rest are not quite as exciting.

What makes paper so good is the way it reacts to your drawing. We are absolutely hopeless with a pen, but the app seemed to make everything we sketched look fairly impressive. Great for budding drawing fans then and definitely a slick app to show off the screen on the latest iPad.

The baby of the Lint team, Hunter has been a tech fan since he bought his first MiniDisc..and what a waste of money that was. He began writing about electronics at the age of 16 and hasn't stopped since. Nowadays he fulfils his mobile phone and gaming obsession whilst attempting to distract people from his bizarre name. Regular meetings with the Gladiators crew see Hunter often returning to work battered and bruised. Considers himself a music obsessive, was once the most highly decorated scout in the country. Fan of trousers.